In a sun roof apparatus provided with an opening portion at a roof of a vehicle, roof panels, which are fixed or movable, are employed at the roof opening portion. The roof panels are composed of glass plates which penetrate the outside light. In order to regulate the amount of the outside light penetrating the roof panel and coming into a vehicle cabin, for example, as disclosed in JP 2006-044637A, a sunshade panel apparatus is disposed below the roof panels. The sunshade panel apparatus is able to open and close a skylight portion provided at the interior member located in the ceiling of the vehicle cabin.
In the sunshade panel apparatus disclosed in JP 2006-044637A, a plurality of sunshade panels are provided. When the skylight portion is closed, the plurality of sunshade panels are arranged so as to be aligned in a forward and backward direction of the vehicle in an identical horizontal plane to block the outside light coming into the vehicle cabin. Also, when the skylight portion is opened to take in the outside light, the plurality of the sunshade panels are moved to a panel compartment provided at a rear of the opening portion of the roof, and are stored by overlapping each other in a vertical direction. In order to guide the movement of the sunshade panels, guide rails are disposed so as to extend in the forward and backward direction of the vehicle in the vicinity of both ends of the roof opening portion.
The sunshade panel apparatus described above is provided with connecting means for connecting the sunshades, which are aligned in the forward and backward direction, to each other. Each connecting means is provided with a link member and a spring. The link member is rotatably mounted to a rear end of one sunshade panel, from among the sunshade panels which are successively placed in the forward and backward direction, and also is mounted at a front end of the other sunshade panel. The spring exerts a biasing force against the link member.
The apparatus is controlled so that the sunshade panels are moved maintaining each predetermined position of the sunshade panels by turning the link member, from the closed state that each sunshade panels are arranged in the identical horizontal plane to the opened state that the sunshade panels are overlapped in the vertical direction to be stored.
As an example, refer to JP2006-044637A.
However, as in the known sunshade panel apparatus described above, a lot of components such as a rotational axial portion of the link member, a spring exerting the biasing force on the link member as well as the link member are required in the connecting means, which controls the sunshade panels to be placed at a predetermined position by way of turning the link member. For the reason, a large space is necessary for disposing the connecting means.
In designing of vehicles, in order to efficiently use a limited space of the vehicle cabin, the sunshade panels are disposed so as to be as close as possible to the roof panel in the vertical direction to enlarge the space for the vehicle cabin. In particular, it is necessary to secure a sufficient space between the ceiling of the vehicle cabin and the head of the passenger.
Thus, in the known sunshade panel apparatus, the connecting means is arranged at inside of the guide rails in the width direction of the vehicle to minimize the vertical dimension of the apparatus.
Further, the mechanical parts such as the connecting means are covered by the interior member so as to make the mechanical parts invisible. Thus, when the arrangement in which the connecting means are arranged at the inside of the guide rails is employed, the large space is necessary in the vehicle width direction for disposing the connecting means. Consequently, it is difficult to set the width of the skylight portion (refer to L of FIG. 6 of this application) large. As a result, it is not possible to sufficiently meet the needs for increasing the width of the skylight portion as much as possible.
The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and provides a sunshade panel apparatus which allows the sunshade panels to be positioned close to a roof panel and also allows to realize the width of a larger skylight.